Harlequin Superromance January 2014 - Bundle 1 of 2: Everywhere She Goes\A Promise for the Baby\That Summer at the Shore (48 page)

He couldn't see the reaction on her face as he said the words because she was looking down, tugging on the ends of the ribbon to tighten the knot. When the bow looked as pristine as it had before the wedding ceremony had even started, she raised her gaze to his. Any emotion she felt had been worked into that knot. “But you still judge me for it, and so I am a fool for having come over here tonight.”

“When you were sitting on that couch, all you wanted was a place to live and health insurance. I'm offering you that—and more. What else do you want from me?” He asked the question knowing what the answer was, hoping it had changed and knowing it shouldn't.

The apartment was silent as Vivian slipped her arms into her coat and buttoned up against the early spring night. Finally, when she was entirely bound up and so far from him that she might as well have been at his mother's house already, Vivian answered, “When I was sitting on your couch I was one step away from being homeless and pregnant. My situation has changed and I now know that I'm worth more—that I deserve more than just a place to live and health insurance. That's not good enough for me.”

Then she walked out his door before he had a chance to tell her that she was worth
everything
to him.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

V
IVIAN
CAME
HOME
from work on Monday, exhausted from a busy day, and checked her email. Among the “buy now” spam from stores, a couple of “hey, you” emails from friends and a note from her aunt Kitty, was a message from her father.

After their last conversation, he'd gone to ground and she'd assumed she wasn't going to hear from him until he needed money—and he knew she had some to provide. He was either desperate for whatever spare pennies she might have, or...

Or Vivian wasn't sure what else. As a child, she'd idolized her father and looked forward to all of their games. Then she'd realized what he was and had never really been able to go back to that wide-eyed adoration. But, sadly, neither had she been able to pull herself away from him entirely.

She contemplated the complete break she could make from him now, while hidden away in Chicago. Then, as all the other times she had contemplated ending their relationship, she thought about how much fun they'd had decorating their house for Christmas one year with playing cards on string. The mouse hovered over the delete button, then moved to the subject line and she clicked.

Her father had written the usual nonsense about how this job would be different, how he would be able to retire/pay her back/buy an island, blah, blah, blah. Not until the last paragraph of the novel did Vivian's heart nearly leap out of her throat. “And I have some new business partners in Chicago. Since you're not really working, maybe you'll want in on this next venture.”

Her father had been studying up while AWOL from her life. Business partners. Venture. She'd almost believed he was legitimate, except that she knew he scraped a living by making people believe his lies.

And he was coming to Chicago.

It had always been a guarantee her father would find her. She wasn't really trying to hide from him, only she didn't want to have to listen to his pleas for money before she'd built up her energy stores again to tell him no. Over and over and over. She wanted to feel on firmer ground before he started knocking her about emotionally.

Nearly two months in Chicago and she was still skirting the same quicksand that had made her flee Las Vegas. Sure, she now had a job and Susan wouldn't kick her out of the house while there was a grandchild in the mix, but the stable base she'd come to Chicago for was still having its foundation dug.

Some of this was her fault. Despite saying no to her dad's pleas for money and ignoring his phone calls
most
of the time, she had given in enough that he believed she would give in completely, eventually. Because she always had. But now she was responsible for more than just her own well-being. She couldn't let her father bleed her dry because then he'd bleed Jelly Bean dry, too.

Karl could protect her from her father. She could call Karl up, apologize for walking out on him, appeal to his sense of responsibility toward their child and move back into his apartment. She wouldn't have to give up her job at Healthy Food if she moved back in with Karl. But she'd be right where she had been a month ago, relying on her husband for security rather than for love and companionship. She'd been trapped in that apartment then, and keeping a part-time job at her mother-in-law's restaurant wouldn't make her free this time.

“Hell,” she said to no one but herself as she logged out of her email. “Being free now is all in my mind.”

She was living in her mother-in-law's house and working in her mother-in-law's restaurant. The only difference between her current situation and the one she insisted she was too good for was that she couldn't sleep in Karl's warm bed with his expansive view of the city whenever she wanted to.

She could always look for a job that wasn't dependent on the Mileks, but she
liked
working at Healthy Food. She liked seeing the same old Poles come in for their buffet dinner every night at five-thirty, and she liked the rotation of cops that came in throughout the day for a meal when they had a free moment. Stability and vibrancy danced together, amongst new immigrant and third-generation Americans alike.

She wanted to be a part of Archer Heights—that odd woman with Asian features and a Polish last name defying everyone's sense of what should be—and have a marriage with Karl based on love and trust rather than dependency and suspicion. She wanted to have her
kolaczki
and eat them, too.

Turning the monitor of the computer off, Vivian giggled at her own joke. Maybe she could embrace what made her different from the neighborhood and use it to pull off what she had in mind. Maybe the idea wasn't that crazy, after all.

* * *

T
ILLY
CAME
OUT
from Babka's kitchen, sweaty and energized. The sweaty Karl understood. After he noticed the twinkle in her eyes and she opened her mouth, he understood the energized bit, as well. “I heard you did the Electric Slide at Phil's wedding.”

He'd known someone would tell his sisters, but he'd hoped they were mature enough to ignore the gossip.

“And that you bumped into Mrs. Biadała twice because you didn't know the steps.”

He'd been wrong. Baby sisters grow taller. They find life partners and they become successful owners of popular restaurants. They even get a dish on the cover of
Bon Appétit.
But they stay baby sisters, confident that their role in life is to keep their older brother humble even though he'd outgrown being able to give
them
a noogie.

“Maybe Dan and I will get married just so I can see you do the Electric Slide in person, instead of having to hear about it.”

“I didn't dance at Renia's wedding. What makes you think I would dance at yours?”

Even the bartender was barely able to contain her amusement as she reached around Tilly to hand him his glass of wine. He'd come to Babka for dinner because he didn't want to be alone in his apartment anymore, didn't want to go to Healthy Food and see Vivian and had mistakenly thought family would help his mood. Instead, Tilly's entire restaurant seemed to be determined to make him regret doing the Electric Slide.

Then the image of Vivian's smile and her swirling hair as she pranced about and clapped flashed in his head, and he knew he would never regret doing anything that made Vivian smile so brightly.

“Ah, but Renia didn't
know
you would dance. I know, and knowledge is power.” She tapped her skull and he rolled his eyes. “The best part about that story was hearing how you nearly caveman-dragged Vivian off the dance floor and into the parking lot. I do so love it when your feathers get ruffled.”

“Get out of the way of my wine and get back to work. I can't believe how intrusive the service is here.”

His sister laughed. “That's what you get for walking in the door just before closing.” Then she waggled her eyebrows at him and said, “Have you told Vivian that you love her yet?”

Karl might have needed many things to go differently during his last exchange with Vivian, but he didn't need to relive their conversation with Tilly.
That's not good enough for me.

He wasn't good enough for her? His apartment wasn't good enough for her? She'd prefaced the pronoun with a reference to a roof over her head, but that didn't make sense. He wasn't just offering her a place to live. He was offering her himself.

That's not good enough for me.

“It's really none of your business.” No matter how much Vivian's words thrashed about in his head, he wasn't going to share the conversation with his baby sister.

She smiled, not worried about his sour mood. “You've never let your family near your business before. One taste and we can't get enough.”

His fights with Jessica had sent him to his office, not to a family member for company.
You think it's enough that we're married and you come home every night. Everyone look at Karl Pawel Milek, such a dedicated husband. But I want to be more than a duty.
And he'd tried. For their marriage's sake, he'd tried. He had bought her flowers, chocolates and jewelry. He had asked what her favorite flowers were because apparently it wasn't roses.
Good husbands bring home flowers, so you're bringing home flowers. It's like you're a robot husband.

Tilly—his whole family—would've been fascinated by those fights.

“If Vivian wasn't living with Mom right now,” he informed his sister, “I wouldn't let you near this business, either.”

His sister raised her dark eyebrows nearly up to her ridiculous turquoise hair. “When is she moving back in with you?”

Karl sipped his wine, but the alcohol didn't make the track of this conversation any easier to bear.

“You think you can out-silence me, and you're probably right. But I've got something to say and you need to hear it.”

“Advice from my baby sister?”

“Your baby sister has figured out how to be in a happy relationship—something you never seemed to manage.”

Karl put down his glass of wine and looked at his sister. He might as well listen to what Tilly had to say. Vivian wasn't coming to live with him; a lecture from his baby sister couldn't hurt his pride any worse.

“The interesting thing about watching you trying to woo Vivian—”

“She's my wife. I don't have to woo her.”

Tilly ignored him. “Is learning that your pontifications about justice and stopping corruption and all that is a bunch of B.S.”

“What do you know?” Anger built in his body until he had no choice but to stand before fury ejected him clean out of his bar stool. “You were eight when Dad died.”

“Sit down, Karl,” she said in a no-nonsense voice he hadn't even known she possessed.

He obeyed, shocked that his sunny, joking baby sister was talking to him this way.

“And don't look so surprised. Anyway, I'm not belittling your devotion to your job, just questioning the reasons you always give for it. All of us assumed your life was motivated by justice, when it's actually motivated by duty.” She shook her head. “I don't know how we were all fooled for so long. It's never been justice that made you come to Mom's for family dinners or go to Mass every Sunday. You think it's your
duty
to come to family dinners because Leon can't and to go to Mass because Dad can't. You come to Babka for dinner out of a sense of responsibility for me. And worst of all, you didn't marry Jessica because you loved her, but because you thought you had a duty to marry a Polish Catholic girl.”

Karl sipped his wine, though it could have been vinegar for as much as he tasted it. “Everything you've said
may
be true, but you didn't say anything about why I go to work every day. I do that because I believe bribery, waste and corruption hurts everyone in Chicago. If Bauer had done his job, the Willis children might still be alive.”

“You've made a compelling argument for your duty to the memory of the Willis children.” He blinked and she smiled in response. “I'll even prove I'm right.”

“I'll admit you've articulated your point neatly, but I don't know how you intend to prove it.”

She smiled brightly. “I bribed two health inspectors so that I could keep Babka open.”

He blinked again. “You shouldn't lie just to prove your point. I'll think about what you said.”

“Oh, I'm not lying.” That gaping smile was still on her face. “Exaggerating maybe, but not lying. You can ask Dan. Steve hid a rat in my kitchen and called the health inspectors on me. Dan took the rat to his house and I bargained with the health inspectors to keep Babka open.”

Paulie the rat. Karl sipped his expensive, tasteless wine and processed what Tilly was telling him. He'd always assumed that pet was some joke of Dan's, but if what Tilly was saying was true, a city worker had let a health code violation slide for his sister. A small infraction—it wasn't as though Tilly ran a dirty restaurant—and she'd had an employee trying to get her restaurant closed, but he had stated on record that no infraction should slide. But, small or not, what she'd done was unethical, if not illegal.

“Why are you telling me this?” He'd have preferred not to know any of this. If he ever investigated the health inspectors' office, this information was too juicy not to come out in some exaggerated form and then he'd have to think about Tilly's restaurant and the legacy she'd given their grandmother and how intertwined it was with his public stance on corruption, no matter how small.

“If you're motivated by a hatred of corruption in all its forms, you're thinking about whether or not your office should investigate the health inspectors' office. If you're motivated by duty, you're trying to figure out if duty ties you to your family or to your office.”

He harrumphed because she was right. “What do my motivations have to do with you sticking your nose in my business?”

“With my nosiness?” She shrugged and then leaned against the bar, her face close to his and sisterly love in her eyes. “Only that I feel like I have new insight into my big brother. But I'm telling you this because
you
might find insight into why Vivian's not packing her bags to move in with you.”

He was sick of being lectured, but he was also sick of living alone with Xìnyùn for his only company. “Okay,
siostra.
How will this help me?”

She pulled back to look at him, her arms folded and her eyes glowing with pleasure. And, if he were being honest with himself, amusement. “I can imagine you asking Vivian to move back in with you because it's your duty as a husband to live with your pregnant wife.” She tsked at him. “Those are sexy words.”

“This conversation was bearable so long as you weren't being sarcastic.” He hated to insult the mother of his child but... “Anyway, shall we go back to the beginning? Remember, Vivian was fired from her job at the casino because she couldn't prove she didn't commit a felony.”